ABSTRACT
Troilus and Cressida's controversial status is reflected in a present interpretative division. On the one hand, commentators, following F.S. Boas (1896),4 customarily group it, along with Measure for Measure and All's Well That Ends Well, as a 'problem play' - bitter, dark, unpleasant, pessimistic and decadent. On the other hand, more recent scholars, following Peter Alexander (1928-9), concur that it was intended for private performance as at an Inns of Court festivity.S
At the Inns of Court law-student revels, we know of two Shakespearean comedies that were presented: Comedy of Errors at Gray's Inn revels, 28 December 1594;6 and Twelfth Night at Middle Temple revels, 2 February 1602.7 We learn of the former performance through an account (Gesta Grayorum) of these Gray's Inn revels. We learn of the latter by chance of its mention in John Manningham's Middle Temple 1602-03 diary, fol. 12b (p. 48), for Candlemas Feast 1601/02.8
Such Inns of Court revels included, during some two months' wellfinanced Christmastide celebrations, diverse entertainments. These could have comprised, in addition to dancing and banquets: fustian-and mockorations; misrule and mock-government; mock-trials, arraignments and sentencings; mock-counsellings; courts of love; processions and progresses; challenges, barriers, trials-by-combat, jousts and mock-duels; mockproclamations and edicts; mock-prognostications; pageants, masques and plays. Such plays were a regular (if unrecorded) feature of revels celebrations.9
